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Updated: May 28, 2025
The condition of nations collectively considered is not different from that of private men, their prosperity is produced by the same conduct, and their calamities drawn upon them by the same errours, negligences, or crimes; and therefore, since he that betrays secrets in private life, indisputably forfeits his claim to trust, and since he that can be no longer trusted is on the brink of ruin, I cannot but conclude that, as by this motion all the secrets of our government must be inevitably betrayed, my duty to his majesty, my love of my country, and my obligations to discharge with fidelity the trust which my constituents have conferred upon me, oblige me to oppose it.
For failing in the prosecution of this purpose, for leaving France too formidable, and neglecting the interests of the emperour, was the treaty of Utrecht censured, and the authors of it prosecuted by the present minister; but how much he has improved the errours of his predecessors to his own advantage, how diligent he has been to rectify the miscarriages of their conduct, and supply the defect, I shall endeavour to explain.
This rule may perhaps be just, when advice is asked, and severity solicited, because no man tells his opinion so freely as when he imagines it received with implicit veneration; and criticks ought never to be consulted, but while errours may yet be rectified or insipidity suppressed.
"As the nature of our collections requires that our accounts of remarkable persons and transactions should be early, our readers must necessarily pardon us, if they are often not complete, and allow us to be sufficiently studious of their satisfaction, if we correct our errours, and supply our defects from subsequent intelligence, where the importance of the subject merits an extraordinary attention, or when we have any peculiar opportunities of procuring information.
That improper officers or magistrates are sent, is the crime or folly of those that sent them. When incapacity is discovered, it ought to be removed; if corruption is detected, it ought to be punished. No government could subsist for a day, if single errours could justify defection. One of their complaints is not such as can claim much commiseration from the softest bosom.
But the noble lord has made it necessary for me to alter my design, by a speech which I will not applaud, because it has, in my opinion, an ill tendency; nor censure, because it wanted neither the splendour of eloquence, nor the arts of reasoning; and had no other defect than that which must always be produced by a bad cause, fallacy in the arguments, and errours in the assertions.
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